Chapter 28

Fern buys back the clothes Stark and Sein lost at the table and rebukes the priest for stripping the boy bare. Whatever the party decides about recruiting him, Frieren means to push Sein toward adventuring, the way Himmel would have. So the group lingers in the village and badgers him each day. Sein notices that Frieren's gaze holds the same hope his old friend once carried, and he thinks back to that friend leaving to wander the Northern Lands with a vow to return by the harvest festival.

Told by the elder brother that Sein loves drink, tobacco, cards, and older women, Stark dangles a journey alongside an older lady, only for Frieren to step forward as an elf many times his senior. Sein deflates, and even a teasing kiss Frieren blows his way, a trick from Flamme, leaves him cold while flustering Fern and Stark instead. He turns the offer down, saying his friend swore to be back within three years and ten have already gone by, so he counts the man as dead.

Frieren charges him with surrendering before he has even begun and warns the regret will come. Cornered, Sein names the real anchor: he cannot desert the brother who, as he once overheard, refused a position in the Holy City so the boy would keep his hometown. The confession furies the brother, who strikes Sein, swears he has never once regretted his own path, and demands to know how long the wallowing will last. Sein makes peace, then tells Frieren he will ride with the party until his friend is found, and they leave the village together.

The party courts Sein every day to no avail. A kiss Frieren picked up from Flamme misses its mark on him but rattles Fern and Stark. Sein first claims his missing friend must be dead, then confesses his true reason for staying is loyalty to his brother. The brother slaps him and refuses the guilt. Reconciled, Sein joins the group to chase his friend, and they set out for Heaven.

Schooled by Heiter, Fern treats gamblers as the lowest of the low yet pardons a drinking priest, certain liquor mends anything; once she hears Sein's vices she decides Heiter was a true priest. The blown kiss came to Frieren from Flamme, and though she frames it as a real seduction move, its only past success was knocking Himmel out. Sein finds Fern strikingly rude. Events unfold in the Alt Woods.